Til This Day
by natsuko-aya
Summary: No one said grief was simple. And it's always easier said than done to move on. Still sometimes, it never happens.


It's a cold, still morning. His sister doesn't barge into his room. Even her footsteps are soft in the hall. She knows, on this day, to leave him alone. His room is quiet, and the silence is broken only by the soft hum of his dormant monitor. Whether he'd rather be alone with his thoughts or distracted by his sister's rants, even he couldn't say.

He hadn't done anything to remind himself. In fact, he had done his best to hide away from any sentiments that would.

It simply occurred to him. Since the moment he had awakened, he felt it. No large event had happened, nothing even to the degree of a gut feeling. His life was an endless cycle of days, with each the same as the one before, all of them wrapped gingerly in a blanket of numbness.

And yet that meant nothing. He still knew. Ironic, wasn't it? That faint dullness that was just stronger than that of other days.

He registers that it's midday, and the earlier soft rays of sunshine now beat down angrily on him as he rises for what remains of the day. Perhaps probed by the new harshness, he finally admits it to himself. Today would have been her birthday.

To him, it's still a dream.

He hasn't accepted it. How could he? That this could all be true, that this was anything more than a horrible nightmare? No. Soon, he'll wake up.

He'll trudge his way to school like any other day. He'll be greeted with loud laughter and a clumsy smile. The happiness directed towards him will be demanding, obnoxious, even annoying.

But it's happiness that is alive.

Still, the reality of him waking in the real world demands him to accept the facts. He knows he needs to move on. If he accepts reality, he could escape this fabrication he'd built for himself. Forgive himself without forgetting. He knows. Yet in spite of this, he realizes the impossibility of this happening, even before he attempts to motivate himself with such a message. He can't. The rest of his life has already been doomed to a constant mocking of his failure. His weakness. If only he had done something more. If only he had realized the tears, if only he had known what was she was fighting. If only, then, things might've been different now. His feelings of grief, the agony of today - neither would sting with such pain. He was praised for his intelligence and now is scorned for his stupidity.

And in the grand scheme of the universe, what did a single person's death matter? Simply a spark that was smoldered in the raging fire of humanity. For but a passing moment, a slight irregular flicker courses through the flames, one most wouldn't even realize. And when those fleeting seconds go, with it, that small light leaves forever. Disappeared, vanished from existence. And the world continues on in its usual ways.

It was torture, absolute torment. Remaining in this world, what purpose would there ever be? Alone he was weak, completely powerless to impact the future in even the slightest of ways. Rotting away in presence, he was set apart from the world inside four small walls, and hidden away from even himself. His own feelings did nothing but ridicule him. How useless, how helpless he was to save one life!

A soft beep of his alarm clock signals 7 o'clock. He moves from his bed, opting to gaze at a reddening sunset through the window of his room. How nostalgic. How painful.

He stands at the window, motionlessly staring outside. The cars and scenery move about normally. He can hear the muffled conversations of others outside, the movement of the world all about. But time has stopped for him. He remains bound in the two minutes in which his entire world fell apart, in the two minutes of which the news of all that happened was delivered, in the two minutes that have been forever etched into his being.

The world is still. There's nothing for him. The ceiling is painted an eerie gray by the dancing shadows the setting sun casts. He floats in and out of sleep, hovering at the edge of consciousness. When he comes to, he realizes he's lying on his bed, the sun having long fallen beyond the horizon. He feels the soft beating of his heart and his eyelids grow heavy, vision becoming smaller and smaller until it fades into a black abyss. On and on his heart thumps. Steadily, without a care in the world. What would happen if it stopped?

He grasps that the day is at its end. Unable to recall when he returned to his bed, he recognizes he's wasted the day in a swamp of self-pity. The simple action of laying his arm over his eyes is done only by excruciating effort. The mere existence of the day has drained him of all energy. His legs slide off the bed and land with a soft thud. His right foot hits the floor normally, but the left one finds its way to something not quite the floor.

A moment of hesitation and panic hit him at the sudden contact with the foreign object. He pauses, the fragile state of his mind alarmed at the day's new event. He leans over to pick up the soft object his foot landed on, the appendage having by some coincidence found its way onto the lone corner of the object that poked out just slightly from under the bed. Even from where he lies, he can't seem to tear his eyes from it. He frees the object from its prison of dust, brushing a few specks off for a clearer view. He wishes he hadn't.

It's a simple red scarf. The ends are fringed with each strand holding onto dust.

The barrier he had so desperately built to hide from the truth at once comes crashing down.

Strange, salty liquid rolls down his face, dropping off his chin onto trembling hands. And for the first time in two years, he cries.

 _I'm sorry..._

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A/N: What'd you guys think? If it wasn't clear, Shintaro is grieving Ayano. I hesitated to put her in as a character for the story, since she wasn't quite 'in it', although she is pretty significant. Was the 3rd person weird? There are definitely some awkward transitions that even I can't get over, but I sort of wanted to get this out of my system.

It's been quite a while since I've put a story up here, so I apologize if formatting is a little unusual.

Any comments and advice are greatly appreciated! And I can't actually remember if Shintaro's room has a window in it or not, but let's pretend it does for the few minutes of this story? I guess if this were to fit in the timeline it'd be prologue-esque, a little on the dark side for Shintaro.

Thanks for reading~ Please review!


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